Chapter 41: Village History |
Allen’s head lay stranded in the slime, the skin of his face stretched thin, like a greasy film floating on water.
The instant sunlight streamed into the room, the last vestiges of life vanished from him and the fleshy tumor, leaving behind a heap of inanimate meat.
He offered no last words, no final groan, not even a flicker of resentment on his face. He simply stared upward, eyes wide, like a sunflower tracking the sun, as if to capture the daylight within his pupils forever.
Yang Yundong walked over in silence and bent down. He placed a coarse, weathered hand over the corpse’s youthful face and gently closed the pale, unseeing eyes.
There was no eulogy, no moment of mourning. He stood in silence for a while before turning his head to look at the tattooed woman leaning against the doorframe.
The woman, who had always kept to herself, had also succumbed and eaten some of the slime. Now, the right side of her face had taken on a semi-solid state, dripping with a flesh-colored ooze.
Sensing Yang Yundong’s gaze, the tattooed woman quickly raised a hand to cover the grotesque transformation on her face. "It’s nothing!" she exclaimed with forced bravado. "Just a scratch. It'll heal as soon as we leave the instance!"
It was true—injuries sustained in an instance didn't carry over into the real world. But could she really last long enough to leave?
Qi Si watched as the mutation on her face spread at a visible rate. Half her neck had begun to ooze slime, making her look like a melting candle, incessantly shedding tears of wax.
Qi Si weighed his words. "From what the village chief said, we can deduce that eating the divine meat stains you with sin, but consuming the slime brings a much swifter retribution. He also mentioned that we could atone by paying respects at the ancestral hall... It looks like we’ll have to alter our plans."
Yang Yundong took off his jacket and went back into the main house. He wrapped up the puddle of white gel on the bed—a substance indistinguishable from the divine meat—tied the jacket into a bundle, and tossed it into Zhang Licai’s arms.
He scanned the remaining players and laid out a plan. "Zhang Licai, Zhao Feng, and Chang Xu, you go to the Village History Hall. Zhu Ling and I will take Yin Lina to the ancestral hall."
Yin Lina was the tattooed woman’s name. She’d only mentioned it offhandedly during the initial introductions, yet somehow, Yang Yundong had remembered.
Yang Yundong's logic was sound. Splitting up was, theoretically, the best strategy. If they ran into another situation like the one at the chief's house, the entire group would likely be annihilated.
The ancestral hall, being a key location for the instance’s atonement mechanic and a place where they might encounter Su Po, was bound to be perilous. It was only fitting that two veterans, both on their third instance, should lead the way.
And if both veterans perished, it would send a clear message to the others: *Forget the ancestral hall. You’re on your own. Whether you survive the next few days is purely a matter of luck.*
After all, they had more than enough divine meat. The players could easily just hole up in Su Po’s courtyard and wait for the end.
And "waiting for the end" in the most literal sense.
Zhu Ling hesitated. "The Village History Hall might contain information about the village's feng shui. I’d like to see if I can find any clues there. Besides, if there are any monsters lurking, it’s better that I’m present to deal with them."
Her reaction was expected. Qi Si gave Zhao Feng a subtle glance, and the man quickly volunteered, "I’ll go with them to the ancestral hall."
The ancestral hall almost certainly held key clues, and Qi Si needed his own eyes on the inside. Zhao Feng was perfect for the role. If things went south, he wouldn't have to worry about Yang Yundong or the tattooed woman; he could simply use them as fodder and make his own escape when the situation turned dire.
Qi Si was confident that Zhao Feng would give it his all for a chance to join the Sila Guild.
He just wondered what kind of expression the man would make when he finally learned it was all a lie.
Qi Si’s eyes curved into a smile. To Zhao Feng, it was a clear look of encouragement.
Zhao Feng knew that major guilds often required a show of loyalty—you couldn't win big without taking risks. Gritting his teeth, he strode over to Yang Yundong’s side.
Yang Yundong said nothing more. With a glance, he indicated for Zhao Feng to carry the tattooed woman on his back. Then, holding his broadsword at the ready, he led the way out of the chief’s house, wading through the layer of slime on the floor.
Only after the trio’s figures had vanished from the doorway did Zhu Ling draw the dagger at her waist. Gripping it tightly, she forced a smile and looked back at Qi Si and Zhang Licai. "Stick with me. If there’s trouble, shout out. I’ll do my best to protect you."
She started for the door, and Zhang Licai, shouldering the bundle from Yang Yundong, hurried to catch up.
Qi Si offered a smiling "Thanks," and trailed along at a distance.
The three of them followed the map’s directions, their feet sinking into the muddy path.
The rutted, earthen path snaked between dilapidated houses. Dry, wild grass grew in tangled clumps on either side, threatening to swallow the road entirely.
The going was tough, but thankfully, the Village History Hall wasn't far from the chief's house. After another five minutes, they stood before a large building whose windows faced the path, letting in plenty of light.
The building’s windows weren't covered with paper. Though caked with grime, the old glass still offered a view of the desks, chairs, and scattered documents inside.
The low wooden door stood wide open, a silent invitation. Qi Si followed the other two across the threshold and was immediately engulfed in a cloud of dust. He choked, sputtering, and his involuntary gasp for air only drew more of the fine particles into his throat, which began to itch unpleasantly.
He reacted quickly, cupping a hand over his mouth and nose until the fit of coughing subsided.
The Village History Hall consisted of a single room, its contents visible at a glance. There were no monsters or traps, making the search for clues a straightforward task.
The place hadn't been visited in ages. Cobwebs sealed the past away like official documents, and though papers still lay scattered across the dust-caked desks, they were doomed to crumble with time.
Qi Si approached a desk where a yellowed household register lay open. A single page had been dog-eared, and he turned to it immediately.
On that page were two names, "Su Po" and "A’Xi," each marked with the same date of death.
Qi Si’s eyes narrowed slightly as he made the connection. "Su Po and A’Xi died before the catastrophe hit Su Clan Village. It's highly likely they never ate the divine meat."
Zhang Licai, who had only seen Qi Si flipping idly through the register, couldn't help but ask, "Hey man, how can you be so sure?"
"I examined Su Po on the first day," Qi Si explained. "She had bruises on her arms consistent with a fall from a great height. The lividity of her skin was purplish, which tells me her body lay in a cold place for a long time after she died."
"Furthermore, on the pages before theirs, the villagers' deaths are all sporadic. There’s no evidence of any mass-casualty event. Do you really think a cataclysm like divine retribution would kill so few people, one at a time?"
Qi Si's finger traced over the dates of birth and death. Then, with a flick, he flipped through a thick sheaf of pages, revealing nothing but blank entries at the back of the register.
A small smile touched his lips. "The records end here, just as I expected. After all, once you eat the divine meat and end up in the chief's state, it's hard to say whether you’re truly dead or alive."
Zhu Ling leaned in, a smile of understanding on her face. "So, because Su Po and A’Xi never ate the divine meat, they didn't die tainted by sin. That must be why they can maintain their human forms and walk in the daylight."
Qi Si narrowed his eyes at the mention of "sin."
No, that wasn’t right. Something was off.
If Su Po was without sin, why did she have that couplet on her door about absolving transgressions through a vegetarian diet?
If she had died long ago, how did she become entangled with the divine meat? And when asked about its legend, why did she recount that grisly story from the past?
It was as if someone had programmed her, feeding her the lines she was supposed to say...
Qi Si thought back to the very first clue he’d received—that unsettling story felt like a misplaced piece in a puzzle, disrupting the logical flow of his deductions and tangling everything into a knot.
Who could have brought the dead Su Po and A’Xi back to the mortal world?
Was there truly only one god in this instance’s backstory?
Zhu Ling, clearly not burdened by such thoughts, picked up a village chronicle that lay amid the dust and carefully opened it.
The first few pages of the chronicle had been torn out, leaving no record of what had occurred before the famine, and thus no clue as to its origins.
The calamity seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, as if a godlike being had plucked it from the heavens and cast it upon this land—inscrutable and unavoidable.
Zhu Ling turned to a page where the writing was still barely legible and began to read intently.
Her brow furrowed as she came across a particular passage, and she began to read the words aloud in a soft voice.
A sliver of Su Clan Village’s past came into view.
...
When the great famine first began, everything seemed no different from any other year.
The old, the weak, and the young starved to death in the fields. Buried corpses were disinterred for food. Springs and ponds ran dry, and the people stripped the trees of their bark and the ground of its roots. It was as if the very earth was dying with the village.
Faced with starvation, all veneers of civility were stripped away. Raw human nature and the instinct for survival grew wild like thorny brambles. Fights, beatings, and murder became the law of the land.
All man-made codes of morality were cast aside. In the ensuing chaos, one tragedy after another became frighteningly commonplace.
Su Po died before the god’s arrival. Maddened by hunger, she had thrown her own grandson, A’Xi, into a cooking pot. Upon realizing what she’d done, she threw herself down a well to her death.
The very next day, before her body could even be buried, the body of the god fell upon the village.
(End of this chapter)
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